


Spark and Fade

by Milieu



Category: Bandom, Black Veil Brides
Genre: Alternate Universe - Creatures & Monsters, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Magic, Angst with a Happy Ending, Concussions, Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, Lack of Communication, Light Angst, Minor Violence, Mythical Beings & Creatures, Non-Linear Narrative
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-05
Updated: 2018-10-05
Packaged: 2019-07-25 12:38:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16197698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Milieu/pseuds/Milieu
Summary: After an adventure gone wrong, Andy tries to slip away. Ashley's not having it.





	Spark and Fade

It was a peaceful town, on the edge of a forest somewhere. It made its money selling goods to traveling adventurers who passed through, housing them in the inn, and mending their wounds. Not much happened late at night, once the pubs had closed their doors.

A lone figure creeping around the back side of the inn was more than a little conspicuous in such a town when nobody else was out and about. Ashley would have thought that Andy would be smart enough to know that and to be a bit stealthier about it.

It was a simple enough plan, all told, just slipping out into the darkness while everyone else was asleep. It came close to success, even, but Andy had been his own undoing. Ashley had, in fact, been asleep until the familiar presence at his bedside nagged at his awareness. A hand pulling the sheets back up to his shoulders from where they'd slid down and bunched around his waist, the same hand almost, not quite, brushing over his hair and then quickly retracting when he finally started to stir. Andy was gone from the room by the time Ashley opened his eyes and it seemed that he had just assumed Ashley hadn't woken.

Stupid, really, to forget that Ashley was a light sleeper even before the knock to the head that he'd recently taken had made him prone to waking in the middle of the night with a headache. Stupider still to think that Ashley wouldn't think to take stock of who and what was in the room that could have woken him and that he wouldn't notice the one vacant bed.

It was easy, safe to think that Andy was just being stupid or careless, expecting that nobody would notice him trying to vanish into the night.

It was better than dwelling on the alternative: that he didn't think anyone who noticed would try to stop him.

\---

Ashley remembered.

Things were blurred, out of order. Sometimes he'd forget details only for them to surface a few hours later, once he'd forgotten why he was trying to recall them in the first place. He had the devil's luck, the crusty old healer woman had said, looking at him with near-disbelief once it had been recounted just what Ashley -- what everyone -- had been through. He had a concussion and a pair of cracked ribs, and his whole back and torso felt like one giant bruise, but he was lucky. An ordinary man would be dead.

And he had focused as well as he could, met her suspicious eyes, and grinned even though it stretched and re-opened some of the cuts on his face and any movement at all made his skull throb.

"I'm not ordinary."

\---

"Where the hell do you think you're going?"

Andy really hadn't expected anyone to catch him, going by the way he jumped. He couldn't have looked any guiltier when he turned to face Ashley, and the various possible reasons lurking behind that expression made Ashley's skin itch beneath his bandages. He crossed his arms so that he wouldn't be tempted to scratch at them.

Andy didn't offer a proper answer either, just a weak shrug. "I was just... going."

"Uh-huh. Where?"

"Somewhere." Andy wouldn't meet his eyes for longer than a few seconds at a time. "Anywhere."

Ashley was glad it was dark, in a way; bright lights didn't agree with him lately. Even with the benefit of nighttime, there was a throbbing pain right at the back of his skull that he was getting used to. It got worse as he tensed, squeezing one bicep with the opposite hand as he tried to weather the sudden rush of frustrated emotion that welled up at Andy's evasiveness. They both knew what was going on here.

"So you're just going," he said. He almost bit back the words that came next. "I thought we were your friends."

Andy flinched. "You are," he said softly. He still wouldn't look Ashley in the face. It shouldn't have made Ashley more agitated, but it did.

He had been looking every chance he got, and no matter how he did it, he couldn't look at Andy and see a monster.

So why the hell did Andy have to keep skulking around like he was one?

\---

Ashley remembered.

It had seemed like a good job. The contractor hadn't asked too many questions about the five of them, which probably should have been a red flag. Reputable people tended to ask about them, ragtag as they were.

Ashley was fuzzy on the details, but he remembered something about the size of the promised reward, the "Why doesn't anybody go into these mountains?" conversation they'd had on the trek up. 

He remembered the air thick with smoke, the panic, hearing what he had thought was an inhuman scream but actually-

He didn't like to remember the sound. How it had rattled him all the way to his core, like it would shake him so hard that he literally went to pieces. Head smashed against a rock, couldn't breathe, sure it would be the last thing he heard.

He supposed it was a scream -- a roar -- that had answered. Split the air, felt like it was splitting his skull too, but it had almost been a relief because it interrupted the first sound.

It was still hard to reconcile that such a sound had come from Andy.

\---

"So that's how you treat your friends, huh? You're just going to run off in the middle of the night, no goodbye, not even going to tell us why-"

"You  _know_ why!"

Ashley recoiled on base instinct when Andy raised his voice, and could have punched himself when he saw how Andy deflated in response.

"I'm not scared of you, dammit," he muttered into the heavy silence that hung between them. "My head just hurts." It was the truth, but Andy was looking away again, pained guilt written all over his face. Ashley wanted to shake him, wanted to yell if he could have, anything to get through that he meant it. That he didn't blame Andy.

Nothing has to change, he wanted to say. But it already had.

\---

He remembered.

Claws and teeth and scales and fire and the  _sound_ and after what was probably seconds but felt like an eternity, Ashley was too disoriented and in too much pain to be properly terrified. There had just been a certainty then, an understanding that he was going to die.

And then Andy had been there. Maybe it was Andy's presence in the first place that had angered it, maybe that was why-

Andy had been there, throwing his own body over Ashley's, screaming,  _roaring_ , wordless fury, blue-white flames, and for a second he hadn't been human.

Ashley had no clear picture in his memory of what Andy had looked like in that second. Didn't think he really saw, not with his eyes. But he had known.

Then the roar had cut off with a choke, and Ashley  _did_ clearly remember the sigils burning silver in a ring around Andy's neck, like a collar, keeping him- contained.

Keeping him human.

Ashley didn't remember how they got off the mountain, mission a failure but all five of them somehow, miraculously, alive. There were snatches of movement, more panicked conversation, stinging and jostling that he could recognize now as Jake's haphazard first-aid. Being carried. When he was finally laid down somewhere, Andy's hand clinging to his like he was the only thing tethering Ashley to the earth. Lifeline.

He did remember that first moment of real wakening, coming to with a start in their makeshift camp, still a day outside of the town.

"Tha' wasn sssd-" he'd slurred, mouth and tongue not working quite like he wanted them to. Skull still felt like it was splitting in two. Someone had tried to shush him, but he was undeterred.

"That was a dragon," he finally said with some measure of clarity. And everything had fallen into place, and his eyes found Andy.

" _You're_ a dragon."

\---

It had hurt. His injuries, yes, of course, but he was alive. They were all alive. What hurt more was the unspoken knowledge they all shared now about the deception. For Ashley, it chafed all the more that he had no right to be hurt or angry over that. But worst of all was the change that had come over Andy in the days since.

The hand that had kept him here on earth was gone. Andy wouldn't even look him in the eyes. He wouldn't look any of them in the eyes. His presence, which Ashley was so used to everyone focusing on, was confined to the edge of a room, drifting further and further away from everyone. It was maddening.

Andy was blaming himself for something, or re-living something, or perhaps anticipating it. Closing himself off before somebody else could tell him he wasn't wanted, wasn't trusted anymore. Ashley recognized it, and he hated it.

It didn't make sense that Andy could slink around expecting to be treated like a monster when he acted so painfully human.

\---

"Fuck you," Ashley said, biting out his frustration and the gnawing panic that hadn't left him alone for days. Andy set his jaw but didn't respond. Ashley could guess what he was expecting, and it gnawed at him all the more. He wanted to be more eloquent, but dammit, his head hurt,  _everything_ hurt, and he couldn't force himself to be calm when Andy was right in front of him but still a world away.

"Fuck you, we're your friends. We care about you, you moron. You're not about to just run off on us like this."

Andy inhaled sharply. "It's not-" he began.

"Not what?" Ashley demanded when he didn't continue.

"It's not... safe. To be around me."

"Bullshit. We've been 'around' you for months." Andy opened his mouth but Ashley barreled over whatever objection he was going to voice. "Don't you fucking say anything about what happened up there being your fault or I'll punch you right in your stupid fucking face."

Andy finally did look at him, and Ashley was so tired of the pitiful expressions he'd been getting day in and day out that he was gratified instead of annoyed that Andy now looked exasperated with him. They both knew that the person Ashley posed the most threat to in his state was himself.

"You saved my life," Ashley continued, tone softening just a bit. "And okay, I guess in doing that you revealed something that you didn't want to, or that you didn't want us to find out in that way, or whatever. But this whole 'woe-is-me, I'm a creature of the darkness, don't gaze upon my terrible visage' shtick is... stupid. It's fucking stupid, okay? If anybody wanted you to leave, we would have said so to your face, and if you think that everyone is just going to turn their back on you after all that we've been through then..." Ashley swallowed, throat suddenly tight. "Then I guess you never really believed that we cared about you like we do."

There was a glimmer there, a shift in Andy's expression that Ashley could just make out in the pale moonlight. Maybe he was getting through. 

He knew, in that instant, how to drive it home.

"What are you-" Andy said as Ashley lifted the hem of his shirt, pulling it over his head and off. He visibly cringed as the extent of Ashley's cuts, bruises, and bandages were revealed, but Ashley ignored them. Instead, he indicated the marks stretched across his stomach.

"Do you know what language this is? What it means?"

"...No," Andy said, reluctantly curious. He'd seen the tattoo before, of course. Everyone had, but nobody ever asked about it. 

If they had ever thought to try prying into that little secret in plain sight, their attention just would have slid off and away from it, like dew rolling off a leaf. If they had to ask, its message wasn't for them.

_I'm not ordinary._

"It's Elvish," Ashley said, watching Andy's expression shift from confusion to shock. "It says 'Outlaw'."

"...You're an elf?"

Ashley smiled faintly. "I'm a thief. A no-good, half-human lowlife that nobody wanted around. Not exactly welcome back where I came from, in other words."

Andy was silent for a long moment, studying him. Ashley could almost see the wheels turning, the questions. He'd had similar questions, recovering in bed with only the scattered memories of that trip up the mountain to turn over in his mind. When he blinked, he saw the brilliant silver sigils against the inside of his eyelids.

_Who cursed you? Why?_ Questions that it wasn't the right time to ask.

"The others don't know," Andy said finally, tone half-questioning.

"No," Ashley confirmed. "CC's gotten hints and probably figured some of it out for himself just because I've known him the longest, but you're the first person I've told."

"I'm not a person," Andy retorted.

Ashley rolled his eyes in annoyance and immediately regretted the throb it sent through his head. "You are a person, dumbass. Just with some... extra bits."

Something warm and fond and familiar flitted across Andy's face before he looked away yet again, but Ashley didn't miss it. He stepped closer.

"And you're not running off on your own. If you go, I'm going with you."

"You can't," Andy immediately responded, as expected. "You're injured, you can't go anywhere."

"Try to stop me," Ashley challenged.

He wasn't fool enough to think he could actually match Andy in a struggle in his current state. That wasn't the point. The point was the threat of the fight itself, the noise, the attention they'd draw from the people inside the inn- from CC, Jake, and Jinxx, who no doubt would want to know just what was going on in the first place.

Andy heaved a deep sigh. "I don't-"

Ashley crossed his arms again, trying not to shiver against the night air. He was still holding his shirt, rather than putting it back on; there was still the nagging suspicion that if he took his eyes off Andy for a moment, he'd vanish into the night. "What?"

Andy's voice was uncharacteristically quiet. "I don't want you to feel like you're in danger when I'm around. Any of you."

"I don't," Ashley answered without hesitation. "None of us do. If you don't believe me, then ask everyone, face to face." When Andy didn't answer right away, Ashley took a chance and reached out to grasp his wrist. "Come on. Come ask them right now."

"I'm not going to wake everyone up just to ask them that," Andy protested. He didn't pull away from Ashley's touch.

"Then ask in the morning, and right now you can come back inside and go to sleep, in the bed that we're still  _paying for_ even if you leave- did you forget about that part?" Truth be told, Ashley had just now remembered it himself, but there was no need to waste a good guilt trip.

Andy still hesitated, but he was clearly breaking down. Ashley tightened his grip on Andy's wrist, tugging him back towards the building.

"Come on," he insisted. "Come back inside. I'm not going to leave you alone until you do."

Andy sighed again, and the lingering resistance against Ashley's pull relaxed. Ashley smiled, relieved, and didn't care that it made his face hurt.

They slipped back inside and up to the room, silent as they'd both emerged. Ashley stayed alert for as long as possible once they were both back in bed; it seemed like a victory, but he didn't want to let his guard down just yet. He fell asleep sooner rather than later, though.

In the morning, Andy was still there with them. Where he belonged.

**Author's Note:**

> This was supposed to be short when I started it. I don't know why I'm on such a random BVB kick lately, but this is another idea that I don't really have a plot for but that I've had for a good while now and wanted to get down.


End file.
